Monthly Archives: September 2011

I was thinking more about the afore­men­tioned discus­sion of composers being denied archival record­ings of their own work. Of course it’s detri­men­tal in that it makes it diffi­cult to learn from one’s expe­ri­ences, but I think it’s equally destruc­tive in another way.

All of my pieces that have been “picked up” are the ones for which I’m able to post good record­ings here on this website. That’s how people discover my music, since only a small bit is avail­able commer­cially, I’m at the outset of my career, and I’m self-published.

One of the hardest things as a composer is coming by these second and third perfor­mances; world premières are compar­a­tively common. They can come from anywhere—college students scouting out rep for their school new music ensem­bles, more estab­lished new-music perform­ers, a few orches­tras, my god, even Ireland. But they all have one thing in common, which is that somebody went to my website and listened to a few pieces and found some­thing they liked.

After a few of those “second-gener­a­tion” perfor­mances, word gets out more easily—through people who’ve attended those concerts, or read about them, the musi­cians who’ve played it passing it on to their musician friends, and so on. By then, the piece will have taken on a life of its own. This is one of the most satis­fy­ing and unbe­liev­able things—to witness people you’ve never met taking steady interest in your work.

In LA I rented a car for the first time in my life and dras­ti­cally under­es­ti­mated the cost. I harvested and smuggled home one (1) lemon, which ended in a vinai­grette. I had a party with Rob and AZ in my hotel room. Some elderly people made fun of me for wearing a tie; I pointed out that the security guard was wearing one also. In the market­place I ate too many pupusas and tortas and had to be carried up the hill by the shortest railway in the world (see above). I was sweet-talked by Azer­bai­jan. I got in three (3) argu­ments with differ­ent Disney Hall garage atten­dants. I found $10 in the parking lot of a thrift store. I had the best sushi of my life (thus far). I had Gabe’s Joan Didion song on loop in my head. I watched Bill Cunning­ham New York and drank whiskey; I watched Lost Highway and drank ginger ale. I wrote 36 emails and 24 bars of music.

Just got back from an idyllic if overly moist week at Tangle­wood, where Metrop­o­lis Ensemble & I recorded what will even­tu­ally be my next record. Tanglewood’s concert season is over and the summer­go­ers have cleared out, so we were able to take over Ozawa Hall, the beau­ti­ful medium-large loaf of brick with which Seiji Ozawa immor­tal­ized his own ego.

“You know, I never thought about it before, but you’re right, I am pretty great”

I will excit­edly spill all beans regard­ing this record­ing when the time comes. In the meantime I am learning sheaves of music for all these gigs coming up in the next month: Druckman with ACME! Derek with Derek! NOW Ensemble!

Nico Muhly has a good post up about how diffi­cult it can be to get record­ings of one’s music from orches­tras. You can not imagine how much I want every­body to hear Nightjar, but this is the reason you can’t. It’s espe­cially frus­trat­ing because in this case, the record­ing is really, really good, and it would hurt exactly zero people if I were to post it (except me, that is. I might could get sued!).

Courtesy of New York Magazine’s Michael Hirschorn in the 9⁄11 anniver­sary issue:

It takes only a cursory review of the events of the past ten years to see how inef­fec­tive irony—both of the self-congrat­u­la­tory spokie variety (Où sont les trucker caps d’antan? ask furry Brook­lynites now earnestly singing call-and-response songs from the fifteenth century at their Montauk CSAs) and the Swiftian exposing-the-absur­dity-of-the-modern-condi­tion variety—has been against the forces of darkness.